


tired songs and a tired radio

by and_hera



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, M/M, There's no plot here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/and_hera/pseuds/and_hera
Summary: Ghosts are the ones that Sammy sees when Ben taps out messages in morse code on the dashboard without even realizing what he’s doing, the ones that grin with sharp teeth when Ben excitedly describes the paranormal of King Falls.So, maybe Sammy believes in ghosts. Maybe he believes in this town. Whatever. he believed in Jack Wright, and now he’s gone.or, four character studies.
Relationships: Ben Arnold/Emily Potter, Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	tired songs and a tired radio

**Author's Note:**

> this is so self indulgent. there's no plot here guys its just me rambling about how much i like these characters! i hope you enjoy <3
> 
> fic title is from name by the goo goo dolls, and the section titles are taken from episode titles of wolf 359 and greater boston!

  1. language mapping



Emily doesn’t fall in love easily, which just speaks to how unique of a person Ben Arnold is.

Emily Potter is a sweet girl, a lovely librarian, she is nice but not too nice and she is smart but not too smart and beautiful but not too beautiful. So, due to her being what most people consider a good person, she ends up not being talked to at all or being idolized.

She smiles a lot. She’s always smiled a lot. Her mother used to tell her that she shouldn’t smile so much, because women don’t have to be passive, they can be brave and good and tough just like men can. The thing is, Emily _likes_ smiling. She knows the moment in movies is when the girl stands up to the man telling her to give him a smile. Emily doesn’t think she would smile at that man if she were in the movie, but she wouldn’t punch him in the face, either.

Lily was always a little braver than she was, at least in that regard. The Strength versus the One. Something like that.

But Emily smiles, and she’s smart, and she’s a bright girl, has been since she was younger. She wasn’t a _gifted_ child, but she took some AP classes, kept mostly all A’s. She had friends in high school, but she wasn’t popular. She was liked. She’s always been liked.

Love for Emily is a quiet affair, see. There are people who declare their love to the moon and back, mothers who kiss their sons goodnight every evening, fathers who dance with their daughters in the kitchen. Her parents were good, were kind, but they were never the type to be loud about it. They were good people, but they weren’t over the top.

Emily has never wanted to shout her love to the world, has never wanted to be a topic of public knowledge. This is a key difference between her and Ben Arnold.

No one ever told Ben that the world doesn’t have to love him, and no one ever told Ben that he doesn’t have to win them over if they don’t. He’s a little too loud and a little too excitable, and Emily loves him. Ben loves her, too, which isn’t as surprising as it would be for anyone else, because if Emily doesn’t fall in love easily, Ben is the exact opposite. Ben loves her, and Emily loves him, and sometimes Emily has to remind him when they’re laying on the couch watching whatever’s on TV and sometimes he reminds her when they’re on the radio even if she doesn’t need reminding.

Cronkite, Brokaw, Ben Arnold. Emily doesn’t think that Ben needs to be compared to anyone else, because there’s no one else in the world like him, but she gets it. He wants to be known the world round. Emily just wants to be known.

When Emily first arrived in King Falls, she didn’t know anyone. It was a small town, and they all seemed to know each other already, and she always felt like a bit of an outsider in their tight-knit community, despite only being from the town over. She was alone, in a way, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Emily. She’s pretty good at working on her own. 

But working with another always makes it easier. So, when someone started stopping by the library almost every day, telling stories of work mishaps or helping with the Jensen kids while their father is gone, Emily felt like she might be fitting in.

Being abducted threw a wrench in that plan, as it did several other plans. Whatever. It’s a fever she’s learning to live with.

So, she’s unwritten. So, she’s a little bit of a mess, lately. But she’s not a ghost anymore, and she can kiss Ben whenever she pleases, so she thinks she’ll be alright. 

Emily hopes that she will, at least.

  1. but perhaps there is a key



Jack Wright was a good person. This only makes it sadder.

When they were younger, Sammy and Lily and Jack watched _Lost_ together. There was a moment of judgement for the people who crashed on the island, when the people who already lived there decided which ones were good and which ones were bad.

Sammy and Lily always joked that Jack would have been taken away, because he was good. Sammy and Lily would have been left on the beach alone because they weren’t like him. It was a joke, and they laughed, even though Jack frowned and told them to stop it, dumbasses, you’re both good, I’m nothing special.

It’s funny. And it’s sad. Jack is the center of all of this, now. The beating heart of the story.

Well, maybe that’s Ben Arnold.

Then, Jack is the blood pumping, the connection of it all. He pushed Sammy out of California and into the middle of nowhere, he pushed Lily back into his path, he made them do what they did. He makes them do what they do.

Sammy misses him. This is an understatement.

The thing is, Jack is there, in between the lines, written in invisible ink, whatever. He’s there. A hand in his empty palm; a ghost of a laugh just across the table in the station; a mouth inches from his that vanishes when he wakes up. Sometimes Sammy’s shadow is longer. Sometimes Sammy’s eyes are hollow.

Sammy doesn’t believe in ghosts on principle. He doesn’t believe in most things on principle, things like demons and ghouls and werewolves and more halloween pranks. King Falls believes in most things on principle. Jack Wright believed in most things on principle.

King Falls has its apparitions. Sammy doesn’t know if he wants to believe in those. Maybe they’re there. Maybe Ben was really carried ten feet off the ground by the spirit of John Wilkes Booth instead of just a prank from those _idiots_ at Mission Apparition. 

King Falls has its apparitions, and Sammy has his ghosts. There’s a difference. Apparitions are the ones from the library, the ones from the phone calls. Ghosts are the ones Sammy sees in his empty apartment. He’s alone. He hasn’t lived alone in a long time. Ghosts are the ones that leave pillows shifted and curtains opened when he doesn’t look; ghosts are the ones that run past him laughing with the cold air when he opens the fridge.

Ghosts are the ones that Sammy sees when Ben taps out messages in morse code on the dashboard without even realizing what he’s doing, the ones that grin with sharp teeth when Ben excitedly describes the paranormal of King Falls.

So, maybe Sammy believes in ghosts. Maybe he believes in this town. Whatever. he believed in Jack Wright, and now he’s gone. He’s never believed in himself, so at least there’s no loss there. 

When Sammy and Jack and Lily watched _Lost_ together, one man lost his love, stuck on an island with no way of reaching her. The love spent three years chasing him down. And later, when he was stuck flashing in and out of time, the man was told that he had to find a constant. He had to find something true in both times.

The man found his love in the past and in the present. He found her, and he told her that he loved her. His constant. Jack had looked over at Sammy and said something about Sammy being his constant if he were to ever get lost.

On his first day of work at King Falls AM, Sammy tripped walking in and spilled coffee all over his producer’s shoes. He was running late, barely having time to grab a coffee and step into the studio before going on the air. Jack was always the timely one of the two of them.

Ten minutes later, a man disappeared live and on the air.

That’s when Sammy realized he might be in for more than he can handle with this town.

  1. things that break other things



Lily read something, once, about the blood in someone’s mouth and a sharp tongue and sharper teeth. Lily’s always been pretty sharp, but she’s also never been one for poetry. She doesn’t remember what it said.

One thing she does remember, something she thinks about a lot these days, is a fact from English class in tenth grade- every hero has a fatal flaw. Now, Lily knows she’s always been a main character. She’s the type. She doesn’t necessarily _want_ to be one, neither does she not want to, but she is. Known the world round. A queen on a chess board, or something. Lily Wright. Phenomenal journalist.

She’s talented, and she’s smart, and she’s funny in a way that most people will laugh but because they’re scared of her rather than because they really think she’s funny. She likes that. She bares her teeth, and runs her tongue across her incisors. 

But every hero has a fatal flaw, and she can’t stop getting left behind, and she thinks she might have figured something out about herself. Self-reliant women should be able to keep it together when they’re left behind.

When Lily was sixteen, she didn’t have a girlfriend, because girls didn't have girlfriends when she was sixteen. But there was a girl, and she was a little in love with her, and she kissed her behind the gym of their Catholic school after seventh bell. The girl got scared, and she didn’t say anything about it, but she didn’t say anything else to Lily, either. It wasn’t quite as drastic as later times would be, but Lily still cried to Jack later. He was- he is- no, he _was_ the younger brother, but he loved her.

And then, of course, he and Sammy left her, and she was alone. Lily doesn’t know if she’s the kind of person who should ever be alone, no matter how much she wants to be. Lily doesn’t know if she’s built that way.

There was Pippa, and Lily was always a little bit in love with her, and she was Pippa’s best man at her wedding. And there goes Pippa, going home, staying safe with her wife. And Lily remains in a town that wants her gone and people who don’t want much better.

She wishes she could say meeting Sammy was serendipity. It wasn’t. Lily’s fatal flaw is that she is always left behind, and also that she can’t leave well enough alone. She chases after her people and clings to them with her nails. She doesn’t really care if she leaves scratches. So finding Sammy wasn’t happenstance.

She wanted to ask the man next to Sammy, the one that filled the spot Jack used to sit, where King Falls takes the people it eats. She wanted to ask the man in the blue hoodie with the brown eyes and the hopeful stance that was oh-so familiar what King Falls does when it spits someone up. She didn’t think he would have answered, though, so she bit her tongue and didn’t bother asking. 

She has a sharp tongue and a sharper wit and sharper teeth. Everything about Lily has been honed down to a point, until all that’s left is something that talks and breathes and wants to be wanted.

And, to be honest, she didn’t think she was capable of hoping. But maybe this town that steals people and returns them just a little bit wrong is capable of returning her, too. She’ll be a little bit wrong, but she can live with that.

Lily runs her tongue across her teeth. It doesn’t bleed.

  1. the storm on the sea of galilee



Ben Arnold has always been a person who feels too much too fast and he never quite knows what to do with himself. He hugs Sammy’s arm and he kisses Emily’s cheek and he braids Lily’s hair. He drives down empty roads at two in the morning and drums his fingers on the wheel at red lights and hums a song from a musical. Doesn’t matter which one.

He never quite knows what to do with his hands. Work is good, work is easy, because at work he is always doing, always in motion. Take the call, hit the button, go to commercial, program the show. Tap Sammy’s arm when he gets too heated at Pete. Prop his chin on his hands when Emily calls. Make coffee during breaks.

Ben works, and he’s good at it. He has a dream to be a producer. He has a dream to be a person who is known the world round, to be a person who is a household name, to be a person. He has a torn sheet of notebook paper pinned to his fridge. It reads, CRONKITE, BROKAW. 

One day, he’ll add his name to it, and that will be the day he’s okay. The day he is whole, or something. Ben doesn’t know.

The problem isn’t work. Well, in a way, the problem _is_ work, because ever since Sammy tripped over the doorway of the station and spilled coffee all over Ben’s chucks, trouble has been biting at their heels. But the problem with his hands _isn’t_ work. The problem comes when he’s home, or at Emily’s. The times where things are still, and he thinks that he should be doing something. 

Ben knows that for most people, this life isn’t all there is. He’s in the same town he grew up in, and he calls his mom almost every other day, and he never wants to leave. He wants to be someone great, but he wants to do it _here_. 

Ben knows that for most people, feelings aren’t something inside you that spill out without you noticing. He knows that for most people, love isn’t all or nothing. 

Once he was in the car with Emily, and she was squinting at the map on her phone, and her glasses were sliding down her nose, and she was wearing lipgloss and her hair was pulled back into a half ponytail. He looked at her, and she looked up at him, triumphant that she figured out the fastest way across town, and she smiled so bright. Ben didn’t know what to do with himself, or with his hands, or with the thing bubbling up inside his chest that was shaped a little like love.

He settled on telling her to buckle her seatbelt. She did. For Ben Arnold, Emily Potter is sunlight on a cloudy day.

He watches _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ with Emily and laughs with her at the awful outfits and bad special effects. He runs his hands through her hair, sometimes, or he taps his foot to the soundtrack of the show. Ben laces his fingers through Emily’s hand, because he loves her, and she loves him, and that is okay. That, in comparison to everything else, is _great_. It’s always been great. Emily is Emily.

But when his hands are empty, he doesn’t feel like a _person_. He’s working on it, because Ben Arnold always has something to work on. He always has something to fix.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please leave comments and kudos if you enjoyed, and come talk to me on twitter @lcvelaces <3


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